The sailor (George Mendosa) and nurse (Greta Zimmer Friedman) depicted in this iconic photo snapped moments after the announcement that World War II had ended turned out to be complete strangers, and apparently Greta Friedman, the nurse, wasn't kissing back: Mendosa: "It was the moment. You come back from the Pacific, and finally, the war ends,' Mendonsa told CBS. 'The excitement of the war being over, plus I had a few drinks. So when I saw the...
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Technical Difficulties with Podcasts? (UPDATED)
I've been getting sporadic reports of problems opening the podcasts, e.g., of people clicking on them from the "podcasts" tab with no result, being unable to force a download to show up as an audio file, and so forth. If you've been having this kind of difficulty would you let me know in comments?Please specify what kind of browser(s), and operating system(s) are involved, and which (if any) workarounds have revolved the problem.UPDATE: I've...
New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy: Meagan Spooner’s Skylark
Check out the third episode of New Books in Science and Fantasy, in which I interview Meagan Spooner about Skylark.The summary:Lark Ainsley lives within a near-hermetically sealed city located in a world scarred and depleted by magical wars. The Architects, who oversee the City, maintain it by harvesting the non-renewable magical energy found in each of the city’s inhabitants. But something goes wrong on Lark’s “Harvest Day,” and she soon finds...
Turkey, Syria and the Geopolitics of Identity
This is a guest post by Peter S. Henne. Peter is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University. He formerly worked as a national security consultant. His research focuses on terrorism and religious conflict; he has also written on the role of faith in US foreign policy. During 2012-2013 he will be a fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The Syrian shelling of Akcakale--a Turkish village on the Syrian border--and Turkey's...
Bad Metaphors: Journals, Articles, and Pages
As a graduate student at an urban university, I envy this RA's large office. New technologies adapt terms from older tools, even when they're curiously inappropriate. Consider "dashboard," which we use now to refer to an easy display of critical information (as in Google Dashboard) or the control panel of an automobile. Originally, however, a dashboard was (per Wikipedia) "a barrier of wood or leather fixed at the front of a horse-drawn...
Thursday Morning Debate Reactions
I had three immediate reactions to last night's Presidential debate. First, when one side is ecstatic and the other side is talking about how "debates don't matter," that's a pretty good indication of who "won." Second, #bizarro2004 continues, with Mitt Romney playing the role of "John Kerry" and Barack Obama of "George W. Bush." In fairness, though, Romney was less stilted than Kerry and Obama wasn't as bad as Bush was during the first debate...
Wednesday Afternoon Video
Explanation at Wired:Hard to believe, but it’s been 10 years since goofy fun-rockers They Might Be Giants released their first family album, No! To accompany the album’s 10th anniversary reissue, the Giants have recorded a revise of the geography-laden track “Alphabet of Nations” and released an accompanying crowdsourced video to benefit the Global Fund for Children.
Pop Music Brings a Lot More Readers than Social Science: Follow-up on ‘Kangnam Style’
Now THAT is Korean art – the Seokguram Buddha; I’ve been to see it 3 times The Internet has slapped down my arrogance. I told myself I wouldn’t write about k-pop, but that post on ‘Kangnam Style’ drove so much traffic to my site and twitter, that here is a response to all the comments. It’s kinda of depressing how my posts on Asian political economy or what-not get little traffic and a lot of yawns, but K-pop brings huge numbers. It’s like...
Wednesday Morning Linkage
Dan Nexon is not responsible fortoday's links.Dan is traveling today, so it's the Duck of Minerva's version of Assistant Editor's Month (or, perhaps, assistant to the editor's month):Dani Rodrik becomes the Clippy of forensic investigators, as he relates how the Turkish government may have faked evidence against 300 officers on coup-plotting charges: "It looks like you're trying to frame someone for treason. Would you like help with that?"...
Human Rights Activism on the Cutting Edge
The German Justice Ministry has outlined a new draft law regulating the circumcision of children in that country, on the heels of a Cologne court’s decision that circumcision of non-consenting minors constituted a human rights violation.The decision, after a four-year-old Muslim boy experienced uncontrollable bleeding following his ritual circumcision, sparked a firestorm, with some child rights activists hailing the decisionand while Muslim...
Unionizing Adjuncts at Georgetown (Updated, and Again)
UPDATE: the author of the Chronicle article, Peter Schmidt, discussed the issue on the Kojo Namdi show yesterday.The SEIU wants to unionize adjunct professors at Georgetown University. As their card makes clear, this is part of a broader effort to unionize contingent labor at colleges and universities. George Washington's adjuncts unionized in 2006, and won a significant pay raise this August. American University's and Montgomery County's...
Tuesday Morning Linkage
Mikheil Saakashvili's party loses in Georgian election (but wait, writes Liz Fuller, maybe not). Mark Adomanis discusses the implications, as does Simon Tisdall. Ankit Panda on Indo-Japanese relations. Dan Brumberg and Hesham Sallam have authored a new USIP paper on Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Egypt. Justin Gengler: "The Uprising is Over. But What is the Price of Bahrain's Victory?"Stuart D. Goldman argues that the Soviet-Japanese border...